in baking, cooking, eating, kayaking, reading, running, snowshoeing, traveling, and just being me.

November 07, 2014

Let it out slowly, push your knee against my hand, cough, say ahhh, follow the light, read this line, make a fist...

One of the joys of working on a cruise ship is having to complete a medical every two years. I didn't time mine very well. My current medical is going to expire mid contract. So I have to renew it now. Pfft that means I only managed to get two contracts out of one medical.

Not only was today a fun day, not, it was an expensive day.

$17.00 for a return train ticket to the clinic in downtown Vancouver. There is no suitable doctor out in the suburbs. My family doctor is not certified or whatever to do the cruise ship medical.

$14.00 for a passport photo to attach to medical form. I guess so they know it's actually my medical and not someone else's.

$150.00 for the physical examination
$80.00 for the CBC and chem panel
$30.00 for hemoglobin
$60.00 for the drug screening
$200.00 to test for HIV, Hep B & Hep C
$15.00 for a pregnancy test
$90.00 for chest X-ray
$30.00 for P/E VDRL - I don't even know what that is!

$686.00 later. And I won't know for three weeks if I'm fit to work or not. Oh joy.

The really fun part of today? Besides spending 3 1/2 hours of a beautiful sunny day at the clinic, the lab and the X-ray place? The lady at the lab misread the stickers and drew too much blood. Only needed 6 vials not 10!